For Freedom and Love
by Titania Le Fey
Summary: Snake and Xena crossover. Realizing Xena is unhappy in the modern world Snake makes the toughest decision of his life.
1. Decisions

Snake had been sitting on the porch swing for longer than he cared to admit. He was cold from the snow blowing around him but barely noticed. It was the ring under his fingers that had his attention. The one he spun around his finger when he was nervous and ran his thumb over when he was lonely. It was hard to think that it might not be there forever, that some day sooner rather than later he would take his dad's wedding band off his finger and break his vows.

Anymore he couldn't help but think that wearing it broke his vows more than taking it off. Who was he to insist she stay? What kind of man ripped his wife and her child away from everything they knew? Even with those thoughts in his mind he knew he could never follow her to Greece and never come back. She didn't belong here and he didn't belong there. They were caught in this rift of not belonging and dragging each other into an alien world.

Sitting there in the cold he knew it killed him, he could see it killing her. She was falling and it was his fault for asking her to stay. He loved her. Loved her like madness, more than his life and even his sanity. That was what he would lose if he took that ring off and gave her the freedom he knew she deserved. He wasn't from her world. He wasn't the Greek warrior that should be at her side and that thought alone killed what little warmth Snake still had. He felt colder on the inside then the outside.

Plissken glanced down at the band on his finger. The Air Force wings etched into the platinum caught the winter light and he felt dead. If you truly love then you let what you love free. He had to do it or at least give her the option. He liked to think he was a courageous man but now that strength and his hope failed him. Let her free. Freedom. Wasn't that what he fought for? How could he deny her the same?

The thoughts went over and over. Free her and kill what was left of him. Still there was no choice but the one he had before him. He had to give her the choice to go home even if it was good-bye. How long would it be; years, maybe it would be the last time he saw her? She'd go back to being the past, history, something long ago that held his heart. The choice hurt beyond anything he could imagine. All the torture of his past was nothing in this moment. To hurt at the hands of another was easy. Blame was elsewhere but to turn on yourself? His fingers left the band and flexed in a futile attempt to drive off the growing numbness.

"Xena, I… You should go home to your people if it's what makes you happy. I love you too much to keep you here with me. I can't hurt you like this anymore baby. I don't want you to go but you need to know you can. I want you to live your life and…. And…I can't go back. I belong here."

Snake spoke the words to himself under his breath and started to cry. Snake brushed them away from his good eye and felt the burn beneath the patch from the tears that couldn't form. She was his life and she needed to be free to choose. Plissken tried to reassure himself but it was no comfort for the pain. Being in love meant giving up and he hated to admit he'd knew this was coming for a long time.

He took a deep breath glancing at the band on his finger. He needed to talk to her now before his courage failed. It was time to let his Princess free. Standing he headed for the house with more fear than he'd felt walking into New York Max with a death sentence injected in his veins. No, this would be worse and no one, even he himself, would ever convince him otherwise.


	2. Rage

The first night alone wasn't bad. Even the empty bed he could deal with. After all many nights he'd spent trapped out of the house or in prison he could deal with sleeping alone. Even waking up to the cold and feeling into the empty spot beside him for the missing woman wasn't the worst. His mind had told him before full consciousness that she was elsewhere. That didn't immediately register as gone.

It took time for his eye to open and even longer after he almost calls out her name to have the desire to move. Even when he does decide to move it is only enough to reach over for the coke at his bedside. Plissken put it back. Even through the shakes and addiction he had no desire for cocaine. The thought of everything was sickening. He tried to tell himself she would be back but he always wondered how long. Would it be next week? Next Month? Next Year? Never? The questions he burdened his mind with were worse than the fact that he had let her go.

His day wouldn't wait. Snake wanted to get up and moving before his children saw him like this. He was in no mood to deal with company or pity. He just needed time. He needed to believe that this was a temporary break but it was so hard after losing so much in the past. Still he fought it back and tried to put his trust in her to return.

He dressed half assed not much caring about how he looked. He didn't care about much of anything as he shuffled downstairs straight to the living room for a drink. He poured it trying to find a distraction but his eye settled on the wedding photo tucked in the glass door of the bar. That had been one of the happiest things he'd ever remembered. It was his dad with him and Xena right after the first dance. It brought a lump to his throat to even think about it. That happiness seemed so far away now.

Snake turned away from the picture only to see a living room filled with Grecian styled furniture. He felt the snap inside long before he even acted. Cold had let go into white hot rage. Everything he had kept pent up and his feeling of fear and loss rushed out in fury. Snake grabbed the first thing his hands could get on, the end table, and smashed off of the chaise lounge. He overturned the lounge as the pressure inside took over. The coffee table with the glass top and wrought iron legs almost went through the window when he threw it out of his way.

He hated everything that reminded him of Greece. Greece was what had taken her away and he loathed it. He wrecked the shelving smashing the urns he'd bought. The rage finally broke into pain. Pure pain. Snake just doubled up on the floor among the pottery shards. They cut in to his skin but the pain was welcome. He wanted to bleed because tears just didn't seem enough to let go of the ache in his chest. The tears came even if they were insufficient. The hot blood on his arm brought agony surging over his skin but he couldn't bear to move. He wanted to lay there and just not be, not be anything until she came home. Plissken wished for it, prayed for the pain to go away and still it went on.


	3. Sea of Cocaine

No one could say Snake didn't hurt still. He was good at covering it and got better with time. The people around him thought things were fine. They thought he was ok and healed after Xena left. No one saw what he did alone or the thoughts he had when he sat staring at the fire. Plissken had died inside. Like everyone else he'd lost over the years she'd taken a chunk of him with her. That was the problem with his love, the black spaces they left behind.

There were things he remembered too. Laughing on the beach when she caught a fish for hope and their time at the gun range. The gun range brought a huge smile to his face when he remembered not only all the trips but the first one that had lead to her coming home with him. Other memories were always there too. Seeing Xena walk down the aisle, the only time he ever saw her nervous enough to faint. Since the day they met there had been happy memories. Even their fights had a certain appeal to him. Snake had always been thankful that she never backed down from him. He really hoped she knew that where ever she was.

Where she was, that brought the pain back. It always started as worry for her safety but he knew too well that she could handle herself. The worry was how he thought of the loneliness. The worry was his way of saying he wanted her home without making it a demand to take back what he'd given. Maybe he regretted it sometimes when he cried over her still locked in the bathroom like a kid. When faced with the worst of the pain he'd never dream of taking his decision back. She deserved freedom. If she stayed and never returned to the modern world he'd make himself believe she was happy. There was too the glimmer of hope that she would come home. She could make him the happiest man in the world again. He wondered if she knew.

These days Plissken drowned the hurt in a sea of cocaine. Some days though the pain was too deep, the bad high would sneak in and make it worse. Euphoric pain seemed an oxymoron but it happened. Behind the high. Behind the huge smile and the dilated eye of drug induced ecstasy was not the soaring feeling people assumed but a crash when everything felt futile and lost without her. Snake trudged through those days the best he could. All that was left to do was sitting and waiting. One day the pain would fade to a dull hum or she'd return home. He prayed for the latter but in his mind the former was ruling out. Still the numb ache was better than having never seen her. She was his wife and no matter the pain he would never give up on his love for her or the belief that she was the best thing to ever happen to him. At least the pain was something to feel.


End file.
